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  “That’s why we’re blessed here in Adamsville. We share values, a love of Christ, we know that He is our savior and that everything we do should be in praise of Him. We know that drinking, sex, drugs – all of that gets in the way of being close to Him. We have parents and friends who love Jesus as much as we do, who help us keep on track.”

  We listened to him speak, and we thought of Shane at Blake Wyatt’s house over the summer, doing keg stands, making out with Brooke in Wyatt’s pool.

  “When somebody offers you a drink at a party – when somebody says ‘One beer can’t hurt’ – you should think about Jesus for a moment, ask in your heart if this is what He would want you to do with your body, your body which is a gift from Him.”

  We looked at Reverend Davies, seated behind Shane, reading along on a sheet of paper, smiling, pleased.

  “In Ecclesiastes, the Bible gives us warning about desires of the eyes: ‘Rejoice, O young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth; Walk in the ways of your heart, and the sight of your eyes; But know that for all these God will bring you into judgment.’

  “We are faced with temptation every weekend, at every party, every dance we attend. But the Lord wants us to replace these sins with prayer, with spiritual discipline. Scripture gives us guidance: ‘See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.’” Shane looked up, toward the ceiling, then shifted his weight, moved himself out of the spotlight, rubbed his eyes.

  We looked at Brooke and Gemma, sitting close to one another, Gemma whispering into Brooke’s ear.

  Reverend Davies got up, came to Shane’s side. “Thank you, Shane.”

  “Thank you, Reverend.” And then Shane looked straight into the congregation. “Go, Bears. Hope to see y’all this weekend.” He put his head down, walked back to his seat. Reverend Davies raised his arms and we got to our feet. The service continued.

  After we did the collection, Gemma and Brooke did a duet, some random community college guy played guitar. It was Faith Hill’s “Breathe,” only they had changed the words – “Caught up in the prayer, God, I know You’re there, Jesus isn’t that the way that love’s supposed to be, I can hear You breathe.” We laughed about this later, the lameness of the lyrics, the nasal sound of their voices, the guy fumbling on the guitar, but people posted on Facebook how good they sounded, how cool they were, how the two of them should go for X Factor the next time it came to Birmingham.

  After church, we went to the country club for lunch with our parents. Mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, fried okra, fried chicken, fried green tomatoes, green beans, buttermilk biscuits. All laid out in a buffet in the main clubhouse – we couldn’t wear jeans in the club, or tennis shoes. We looked like a J. Crew catalogue when we were there, we’d say, only fatter. The club used to be white only, our parents would tell us, but there were some black members now, if only a few. All the staff were black, though, and on the weekends they were mostly our age. They served us food from the buffet.

  Carolyn came with Taylor, and maybe because Tiffany and all those weren’t there, they hung out with us. Later, everybody disagreed about when this happened – whether it was before Homecoming or after or what – but it must have been before, that’s what we said, ’cause the air was just a little warm, and Carolyn was still smiling, she was speaking up, laughing. And people still wanted to be near her.

  After we’d gotten our food, she said it was weird that all the servers were black and asked us if it made us uncomfortable. We told her that we hadn’t really thought about it, and that was true, mostly. We said later that we thought she was faking. It was easy to be the way she was if you weren’t from here. Things are more complicated when you’re in it.

  The parents stayed together at the tables, and we took our food in Styrofoam containers and went out to the golf course to eat. The guys smoked, if they were sure we were out of view of the clubhouse, and we would take drags in turns, if we were in the mood. It was still warm that day in the fall, the heat from summer lingered longer than usual that year and the humidity made it worse – and we sat in a sandpit because we said this would keep us cool, but we felt sweat on the backs of our necks all the same.

  If you looked to your right, you could see the rest of the course, and trees and the pool and tennis courts and more trees. To your left, trees and then a clearing, and through it the Stripline with traffic blurring by. You could just make out the Walmart sign: “Open 24 hours.” On the golf course, though, you could barely hear the traffic, and on a Sunday evening, with the course closed at five, you could just hear crickets and see fireflies. When we were little, we used to try to catch them in our hands, always forgetting to bring jars from home. We would hold them for a second, but then they would tickle, and we’d have to open our hands, letting them fly away. Andrew Wright could catch anything when we were little – but once, he’d gotten too excited and smashed a firefly in his palms. We thought he’d been stung by a bee – he screamed, tears in his eyes – but there was no mark or bite, just the wings of the bug on his hands. We stopped doing that a few years ago, when we got older. And in a couple of years, when we’d finished high school, we’d have to sit inside with our parents, like our older brothers and sisters and cousins did. But not for now.

  That day, Carolyn dared us to go swimming in the pool, even though it was only open in the summer and we didn’t have our bathing suits. We thought she was joking, and we stayed on the green as she ran through the parking lot, and then jumped the fence into the pool. We looked at each other and realized she was for real. We thought we’d hear a splash or something, but we didn’t. So we ran to be near her and we looked through the wire fence. Just folded loungers and big blue and white umbrellas. An orange and green Little Mermaid beach towel lay on the ground near the baby pool and we guessed it had been there since the summer, molding and fading. A pair of white Keds were thrown at the side, next to a pair of crusty cream athletic socks, probably there since the last decade.

  We were about to turn and walk away when we heard the diving board bounce, creaking and dry. Carolyn on the edge of it – the high dive – the one we were only allowed to dive off after we could swim a length without stopping to rest at the side. She wasn’t smiling or looking at us, she was just bouncing on the edge in her bare feet. She put her hands in the air, as if she might dive, and one of the guys called her to stop. She looked up – eyes empty and wide. She didn’t say anything and then she smiled and took off her shirt, took off her skirt, threw them onto the concrete, by the lifeguard stand. We could see those marks on her arms, and some on her stomach – maybe they were just scars? We stared at her, bouncing on the edge. And then she dove: she barely made a splash, and she was in the water, diving down and touching the drain, staying under for what seemed like forever. We didn’t know how she’d get home, or what we’d say to our parents, or what we’d do if any of the staff walked by. We watched her swim, though, underneath the water, her tiny hips and the muscles in her shoulders, her spindly legs, knobbly knees and elbows, her hair streaming out behind her, like a tail. She could go on and on without taking a breath and when she did come up for air, she didn’t look our way or seem to even know we were watching.

  None of us said anything at all. We didn’t yell, and the guys didn’t say anything gross. We stood still and we watched. And we thought about getting in with her, thought about taking off our shirts and skirts – wasn’t your underwear and bra just like a bathing suit anyway? But it was easier to watch, we decided.

  Nobody got any pictures of that day, of us on the lawn, of her in the water, in her bra like a mermaid, but we said later we were happy that we didn’t. People would never have forgotten it, never let her live it down. We let her get away with it, gave her a free pass, and we just sat and watched and we took pictures in our minds and didn’t text or talk about it until months and months later. Her body was tiny, she was perfect, and she was unafraid.

  Years later, we wou
ld remember this and we were all a little hazy on the details and what one of us was sure of contradicted something someone else was certain had happened. So we patched things together like a quilt, somebody’s memory stitched onto somebody else’s until it made something large and something real, something that couldn’t be torn apart. It was important for us to have this – a shared truth – and we never shared it except with one another, and it wasn’t so clear why.

  Andrew Wright was with us that day. We wondered why he wasn’t with Gemma – they had been joined at the hip since school started, making out under the bleachers, in the parking lot, outside study hall, during first period. They were together wherever we looked. But Andrew Wright was alone that day, and we wondered if Gemma would mind her boyfriend staring at the new girl as she took off half her clothes and got into the pool. Looking back, we wondered if that’s when his whole thing for Carolyn started. We guessed it might have been earlier – thinking of him at the balloon festival, looking so tense and alone – and then others thought it might have been much later, and that she had pursued him. In any case, we remembered a lot about Carolyn from that day, and we also remembered Andrew’s face. Maybe because of everything with his mom, or maybe because he’d always been a little afraid of the water, his eyes were glued to Carolyn in that pool, his mouth hanging open. If we had wanted to make fun of him about it, we could have. But we didn’t. And we were glad of that because, in the end, words hurt Andrew. People said, sticks and stones and all that. But not Andrew.

  Facebook

  DAVE DILLON “The LORD is my strength and my song, and He has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise Him, my father’s God, and I will exalt Him. What’s your Bible quote for today?”

  Brooke Moore and 12 other people liked this.

  Gemma Davies, Brooke Moore and one other person commented on this.

  BROOKE MOORE “When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God”

  DAVE DILLON Good one, Brooke! Great to see you at service!

  GEMMA DAVIES “So put to death the sinful, earthly things lurking within you. Have nothing to do with sexual immorality, lust and evil desires. Don’t be greedy, for a greedy person is an idolater, worshiping the things of this world. Because of these sins, the anger of God is coming”

  DAVE DILLON Right on, Gemma! Your dad would be proud!

  GEMMA DAVIES Thank you Dave. Can me and Brook meet with you? We now that some kids where skinny dipping (after service) and we are conserned L

  DAVE DILLON Thanks, Gemma. I’ll give you a call

  Chapter 15

  We made the Homecoming float at the Halls’ farm. We came up with ideas after school and the committee wrote them up and we were assigned tasks and we worked from five in the evening until ten or midnight or whenever we were done. We slipped vodka into Red Bull and some of the girls acted drunk and some of the guys smoked behind the barn. We painted and we sang and we drank. We stood together and tried to flirt or tried to ignore each other. This is what we did.

  The Halls’ wasn’t a working farm. Dylan’s dad’s dad had worked it, but when he died, Dylan’s dad didn’t keep it up – he had gone to UAB Business School and owned three Sonics – two in Adamsville and one in Cullman. Dylan was in the Future Farmers of America Club all the same, and his dad was the parent leader. We weren’t sure why. They did tours of the farm sometimes – for some of the county summer camps – and they kept horses and we sometimes saw Dylan riding. The farm was huge – you could put two of our high schools in it, Dylan’s dad said, and we all loved to be there, and we loved to imagine that it was still a working farm, that Dylan and his family lived off the land, milked cows, gathered hay. But Dylan’s dad brought us Sonic fried pickles at regular intervals during the night, and we remembered what was what. Still, though, there was so much room, and we could build incredible floats – mess up and start again – and we could go places to hide and talk or make out. Whatever we wanted. We loved this time of year.

  It was evening when we arrived, the light fading in the sky, but the barn was illuminated with Christmas lights. We worked inside but looked out at the farmland as we sorted out the plywood, the papier mâché, the spray paint, the glitter. The Halls’ dogs – two golden retrievers, probably eight or nine years old – ran across the fields hiding behind bales of hay, barking every time a car arrived down the long gravel driveway. The house was lit up in the distance – at least half a mile from the barn – yellow, with white shutters and a wraparound porch. All the lights were on, and we imagined Mrs Hall and Dylan’s younger brothers inside, Mrs Hall making dinner and the boys gathered around the television, watching some cartoon before they ate, before their bedtime routine began. A tire swing hung from a large oak next to the four-car garage, a jungle gym and a slide just behind it. The Halls were lucky to have so much space, we said to each other, though we’d never seen Dylan or his brothers out in the yard.

  As we worked, we watched while Brooke Moore laughed, rolling her head back and drinking a Red Bull. She was talking to Gemma, but most of the barn was watching her. That’s the way it used to be with Brooke. She was in charge of the lettering. The cheerleaders always did perfect bubble letters – years of practice from pep rally signs and banners for the buses, the front of the school. Brooke held a paintbrush in one hand, her Coke in another – we couldn’t tell if she was drunk or just really happy – we could hear her laughing from the other side of the barn.

  Carolyn arrived about an hour after us and, as she walked in, as she moved out of the darkness of the field, we could just make out Shane walking behind her. And that’s when we looked back at Brooke and saw her face kind of change – not looking angry, really, but nervous or annoyed or uptight or something. She stared at Carolyn – wearing old sweatpants and a mismatched hoodie, still looking pretty, still looking perfect. Brooke took her phone out of her pocket and she typed something. She walked out of the barn and got into her car. A door slammed.

  The headlights on Brooke’s car went on and the light filled the barn. People yelled for her to turn them off, put their hands in their faces. Carolyn kept looking straight ahead and her face was lit up – her eyes were clear and glistening, her skin was so pale the light practically bounced off it. She was staring into the light and she didn’t blink. The car reversed and the barn went dim.

  Carolyn stood close to Shane and she didn’t say much, or not much that we could hear. She had gone quieter since the thing after swim practice, quieter with us and maybe quieter with everybody, and we didn’t know what to do to make it right, to bring her back out of her shell.

  She worked on the same piece of the float as Shane did – the theme was Mardi Gras and while he cut pieces of timber for the frame, she painted a jazz musician on a flat piece of wood that would be mounted to the front of Mr Overton’s vintage Ford Mustang. Her painting was detailed, the saxophone looked like it was in 3D and, later, we talked about how good she was. How she could paint without a pattern or a stencil, on her own. How she didn’t worry about messing up or people not liking it or just getting it wrong. We wondered if she cared deep down, but somehow we figured she didn’t. We wondered what she thought about a lot of the time, but we never got around to asking her. She did everything right, as far as we could see, and everybody was aware of it, probably Brooke most especially. Looking back, we admitted we could imagine it was all kind of hard for Brooke. But at the time, we thought she was a selfish bitch.

  We stayed working until midnight in the weeks leading up to Homecoming – we talked about how we’d never get it done, how we were way behind, but we knew we would finish, because we always did, even in middle school. We worried that thi
s year’s wouldn’t be as good as last year’s, that the standard was dropping. We weren’t the most artistic class – the year above us was – but we were the hardest-working, we were told, and the most committed to the parade. Carolyn changed that for us that year, she was put in charge of all the artistic parts – and she constructed the plan for the whole float. Looking back, we wondered if it was so great for her that she was so talented. When you’re new, and when you’re a girl, it’s not so good to be good at something. Better to be average, to be barely visible, to make yourself scarce. Carolyn never did that, though, never blended in.

  We built a bonfire after we’d finished making the float – this was tradition, too, and Mr and Mrs Hall helped us find stuff that would burn well. And they took logs from the barn – they’d had to get rid of some oaks when Walmart bought a part of their land – and lined them around the fire so we could sit and watch.

  The fire started out small – a little in the center – and within five, ten minutes, after Mr Hall had loaded up more kerosene and more branches and newspaper, it was huge and high and blue and red and black from smoke. We had to sit back and away so we wouldn’t be blinded and so it wouldn’t burn our faces. We sat all around it, in pairs and in threes and fours. Shane and Carolyn were directly across from us, and through the fire, through the blue and the red, you could see them making out – his hand sliding up her shirt, her hands in her lap.

  Mrs Hall gave us stuff to make smores and sparklers to light. The fire got too big and our marshmallows caught fire and went black – too black to eat – only Dylan would take them, and he loaded up a sheet of graham crackers with twenty fried marshmallows.

  We liked the sparklers best – once they were lit, we’d walk away from the fire, away from our seats and into the darkest parts of the field. We’d swirl them around and try to make words with them – our names, if we could – and the guys would do curse words, like they would with their calculators, and then we’d make shapes, hearts, stars, flowers, then just lines and circles – like an Etch A Sketch. Mr and Mrs Hall told us to be careful, and we kind of laughed at this, thinking nothing could go wrong, and we watched Blake Wyatt put around twenty unlit sparklers into the front of his pants, mouthing to us that we could use them later. While we played with fire, Shane and Carolyn stayed on the log, making out. Once Brooke was gone, we guessed they didn’t care who saw them. We would look back, and we could see their faces, through the orange glow and the smoke, and we wondered what it was like to be her, to be wanted so badly, to be accepted so easily.